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thetasigma_1355 t1_j6osd5s wrote

Reply to comment by smokedroaches in PayPal to lay off 2,000 employees in coming weeks, about 7% of workforce by DeificClusterfuck

As an international company doing financial transactions you typically need expertise in every single country you operate in as you need to be compliant with the laws and regulations in every single country you operate in. You can get in to a ton of problems if you don’t have effective AML and KYC compliance programs.

Some countries (China) often require on-soil infrastructure as well.

It’s really hard to appreciate the complexity of international business until you’ve had to deal with it. Customer service is a tiny segment of their business. Mountains of lawyers and compliance professionals are what drive the employee count.

They also certainly have numerous product teams developing different tools for different types of customers. Things like Open Banking are becoming much larger and more prevalent.

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ToxicAdamm t1_j6oxr1p wrote

> Mountains of lawyers and compliance professionals are what drive the employee count.

You would think you could just contract that out, but maybe there are government rules against that type of thing.

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thetasigma_1355 t1_j6ozxig wrote

Contracting out a mountain of lawyers is a terrible value proposition. They charge hundreds an hour and you need hundreds of them at 40-50 hours a week year round. Much cheaper (and effective) to have your own legal dept.

Compliance can be a mixed bag but generally it’s much cheaper to create your own programs. And as you said, certain compliance functions will be required to be in-house. Depending on the industry, you also have to consider the types of data you’ll be exchanging. Financial data is highly sensitive so you can’t just offshore resources in Vietnam or somewhere else in SE Asia.

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kingofducks t1_j6ozpwe wrote

You know how much legal fees cost? Hiring full time employees is to save money.

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